Third Man, The

You need to watch this move or maybe you just need to hear it. The soundtrack alone should earn it nine or ten stars. No wonder this one is a classic. I never knew a zither could sound so good. Whoever did the sound editing on this film needs to have a 100 ft tall marble statue carved in their likeness installed somewhere in Burbank or Hollywood just to remind the industry how it can be done.

The movie is filmed in post-war Europe where huge rubble heaps are still standing. I'm glad the director Carol Reed chose to film on location. I can still hear the peculiar squeaking sound the bricks made when the actors climb over a piles of them.

Heavely Creatures

Excellent movie. I'll write more later.

Night Moves (not Bob Seger's song)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073453/

Pretty darn good. Want to see how gorgeous Melanie Griffith was when she was about 18 years old? Want to see her nekkid? Rent Night Moves.
A young James Woods appears in a small role as a squirrely hoodlum type and does a good job. One character says of another, "he'd fuck a woodpile on the chance there might be a snake in it." Heh.

Even without Melanie's physical charms on display this would be a good film. Six and a half stars. Maybe seven.

Down in the Valley

Pretty good stuff. Recommended. Edward Norton as a seemingly harmless nut case falling obsessively for the lovely, much younger Evan Rachel Wood.

King of California

Good film. Michael Douglas in an unusual (for him) role. He plays a burned-out jazz musician, pot-head and general fuck-up who has just been let out of the nuthouse. His daughter played by Evan Rachel Wood has been holding down the fort all alone while he's been getting therapy for the past two years. He comes home with a plan to find some burried Spanish treasure in the hills beyond the sprawl. I guess this film is about being able to trust and having faith in loved ones who don't seem to deserve any faith or trust. Anyway it has some sweet moments. Both of the main characters are easy to like and there are several good laughs mixed in. I think it's an sincere movie.

Black Book, The (contains spoilers)

Excellent film. Without any sentimentality this film depicts the crushing brutality of life in the occupied Netherlands late in the Second World War. The plot involves a conspiricy between a pair of Dutch men and a German officer to target the wealthiest Jewish people still living (underground) in the Netherlands. The Dutch men convince the Jews that for a price they will transport them to liberated Belgium. The Jews, carrying all their valuables, (cash, gold and jewelry) are led onto a barge that is supposed to ferry them to safety across the border. But there is a German partol boat waiting downstream for them and they are slaughtered on the deck of the barge. The Germans loot the bodies but our heroine escapes by diving into the canal.

The director does so many things right. The pace is perfect and someone did a great job at editing. Violent events pile up against one another as a terrible momentum builds. There is only a handful of moments when any of the characters has time to reflect on their situation before some new, unanticipated disaster crashes in.

This film has a twisty, complex, yet readily followed plot. It shows how compicated occupying a foreign nation is. It shows how easily the most committed, dedicated partisan could be framed as a traitor. You would expect life in the resistance to be dangerous, but you would not expect this kind of treachery from your own comrades. If you were a resistance fighter you would never expect to find a loyal ally in the German army yet I'm sure these events transpired in a fashion similar to this dramatization. You never feel the filmakers have embelished.

I give this pic nine solid gold stars. This story could not have been told this well by anyone in Hollywood.

The Hunting Party

Wow. This movie is truly terrible. I have nothing good to say about it. If you're on a long flight and you can't fall asleep and The Hunting Party is playing, read and then re-read the airline's crappy magazine rather than waste 104 minutes of your life watching this dreck. Run away! Run away!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455782/